Meet Josue Cervantes: TTP’s Next Top Chef

Meet Josue Cervantes, a 2023 Trotter Project Scholarship Recipient. At just 19 years old, Josue has a lot on his plate, but he's doing it all with a smile. Student, entrepreneur, and world-class chef honoring his ancestors, you won't want to miss our interview with Josue—or his future dining establishments!

Say hello to Josue Cervantes, a Trotter Project 2023 Charlie Trotter Pursuit of Excellence scholarship recipient. Josue and his food are a lot alike—wise beyond his years, yet only 19 years old. A modern interpretation of what his Mexican ancestors practiced for generations before him. Bright and colorful, but with a sophisticated simplicity behind each decision put on the plate. A quiet confidence with a lot to say. Read and watch more about Josue’s story below—we know his journey is one those that came before him and those that come after will honor and respect.

Watch Josue Cervantes's story here.

Thank you so much for meeting with us today, Josue. We're so excited to talk with you. So let's start off with a little bit about your background, when and how you first got interested in the culinary arts.

For me, I started off right away when I was a young kid with my mom. We have always celebrated the traditions of Day of the Dead. So for me, right away, when we started doing Day of the Dead, setting up the ofrenda, setting up all of the baked goods, all of the stuff that we would be cooking, it was something that I was really interested in. It was honoring all of the ancestors, representing all of their techniques and all of their skills that they have done within the culinary field, representing all of their agriculture skills, representing all of the things that they have done within the whole community.

Amazing. And what are some of your favorite things that you like to cook and bake when you're celebrating Day of the Dead? 

So for us, we have a lot of traditions starting off with pan de muerto. It's just basically baking bread that is infused with oranges and cempasúchil flower powders. And then from there, we also infuse it with corn ash—we just have the corn husks and we burn them until they turn to ash. And then from there we use that also for the pan de muerto, but we also do a lot of other things—we cook a lot of the things that our ancestors have loved and things that they have always cherished when they were still here on the earth.

We would always do atoles, we would do moles, cooking with guavas, cooking a lot of pumpkin and turning them into calabaza en tacha. So just a lot of things that they loved, just putting all of that on the ofrenda.

So you're starting off in the kitchen with your mom. It's very much a family tradition for you to be working with food. What was your first foray into getting into culinary competitions and wanting to do that in school? 

I started off in my high school career with a culinary arts program. Right away when I transitioned into the culinary arts program within my sophomore year, that's when I started getting interested doing a lot of competitions. My culinary instructor, Chef Morone, was the one who introduced me to how I can get into these different culinary competitions.

It was representing more within my skills and within my culture rather than just doing a competition just to do a competition. It has always been about how I can put myself forward and how I can represent the dishes that I want to honor, and just spread a light and showcase that there's a lot more to Mexican cuisine in ways that we wouldn't have ever seen it done before.

I like to show how my ancestors’ techniques can be brought up in a way where it could be elevated. It can be seen more in a non-traditional way and just show them in a way where I would want to honor them and represent them in a different way.  

Can you talk to us about some of those techniques that you're bringing to a modern light?

I have always been a big fan of using a lot of the traditional techniques within Mexican cuisine. So using the mortar and pestle, using your metate, using a lot of the ancient techniques that we had back in my ancestors’ times and just connecting with that, more than just instead of using like a blender or using different other stuff. It’s asking, “How can you connect with your ancestors with the food that you are making?”

When we use a molcajete, it’s more of a traditional way of building on flavors within the molcajete. For us, molcajetes are used to make salsas.

This is how it has always worked, and it's something that you should carry on within our traditions. Same thing for when we make tortillas, we like making our own corn masa. We like cultivating our own corn. We like doing the process of the nixtamalization of the corn, we like grinding our own corn. We like pressing our own tortillas, putting them on the comal, because at the end of the day, you're connecting with your own ancestral roots. You know what you're putting in there, the love that's going in there, you know that. All the process that you are doing was taught by the same hands that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Yeah, and you can definitely then taste the difference. So it sounds like you also love gardening. Is there anything that you're loving right now that you're picking from the garden and developing? Anything that we can find in a Chef Josue dish that someone would know you by?

A lot of people know me by the flowers that I use as one of my garnishes. My mom has always been a big fan of flowers. My grandmother has always been a big fan of flowers. I have always had a big hand with choosing different flowers, planting different flowers. My mom and I had a conversation about planting flowers that were edible enough and that were beautiful enough to put on plates.

We always go flower hunting. In my garden, you're going to see a lot of flowers that I use for plating, but personally for me, one of the most amazing flowers that I love and that I cherish is the cempasúchil flower. We have a very big bush of them. So it's a lot of those that you're going to see there, which is one of my favorite flowers to plate with. 

And really bright, super colorful plating it sounds like. So you're only 19. You have your own catering company. Tell us more about it.  

Yeah, so El Amor Del Ancestro is my company that I started back when I was 16. It’s a whole homage to the ancestors within the whole representation of who they were. By the age of 16, I had the name, I didn't have anything really much else set up yet.

Not until once we hit a little bit more to Day of the Dead, that's when I started to design the whole character that was going to represent who El Amor Del Ancestro was. I created this little calaverita that I call Ancestro. He's basically a little calaca, and he has a little guitar that represents the past and then the future at the same time.

My family members have always loved music. Music was always a part of our traditions. And it was always something that we would do, especially when we were cooking. So we would always have music while we were cooking and stuff like that. 

Wow. And what kind of events have you catered so far? Any special memories you can tell us?

I do a lot of cake orders. I do a lot of Sweet 15 orders. I do a lot of dessert tables. I also do catering events too, representing different tasting menus and stuff like that. I have also done some private dinner services. I work with my customers and their theme, and then I create a menu based on their theme. I get to create a whole menu based on Mexican cuisine under their theme and how we can do more of an elevated theme. It's not something that's gonna be repetitive in a way. Very custom. 

Let's talk a little bit more about college. You just started last year at Johnson and Wales. Tell us a little bit more about your choice and what you're studying while you're there? 

Johnson and Wales wasn't really something that I thought I was going to go into. The way that I set myself up for college was basically on how good I was going to do within my final competition that I did for C-CAP.

C-CAP is an organization that gives out scholarships to students who compete within their final year. Johnson and Wales only has two scholarships. 

I was very nervous. I didn't know how I was going to do. It was more of just going in there and seeing what will happen. I actually have a story within that. The day before my competition, we had to prepare a jus. The jus was something that we had to take within our competition the next day. And when I had prepared the jus, it had burnt. And I had no more chicken stock. I had no more chicken bones. So that was my jus, and that's what I'm going to be taking into the competition. So I walk in, I take the jus. I knew it was a little burnt, but somehow, miraculously, I got the highest score. 

Everybody loved the dish. Everybody raved for the dish. And the whole time I'm thinking “Okay, the jus was burnt though, but okay.” It was good.

Two months later, I had an interview with C-CAP located in New York. It was my final interview that I needed to do for the whole process of the competition. And then two weeks later, I got a phone call. It was from my mentor, Chef Anthony, who is in charge of the C-CAP organization here in Chicago. And then that's when he broke the news to me that I was going to go to Johnson and Wales with the whole full tuition scholarship, which was insane. 

You’re studying culinary arts—you also mentioned a minor to me. Tell us more about that.

I just added a minor for culinary sustainability. And the reason why I added that was mainly because I realized that culinary sustainability just follows everywhere that I go. Mainly because culinary sustainability is something that has always been taught to me as a kid within my Mexican cuisine, my culture, my heritage.

For us, we have always been taught that you cook in a farm-to-table situation, where you grow your own produce, you see what you have available, and you make with what you have. So for us, it wasn't always just you're gonna eat whatever you want in a way. It's more of honoring what you have and using what you have instead of being wasteful and not using everything that you have.

My mom has always taught me that. We have to work with whatever we have because at the end of the day, that's what we're given. It's what we have and we're going to make the best with what we have. 

Yeah. So you're here in school, you're doing so much. Tell me more about the events you're doing. You’re doing culinary competitions, as well as being president of a club? 

I became president of Culinaria Latina, which is a club that honors and represents Latin American cuisine. We do a lot of events that surrounds a lot of Latin American culture and stuff like that. So starting right away, we're going to be having our first events where we introduce the club to the incoming freshmen. We start introducing our events that we're going to be doing. We're trying to do another Valentine's dinner service that we're coming up with. 

You've, pun intended, got a lot on your plate. But it seems like you're doing it all with a smile. Part of your college journey, which we've been so lucky that we've gotten to know you during, has been as a Trotter Project Scholarship recipient. Tell us about how you first heard about The Trotter Project and why it really stood out to you? 

I heard about The Trotter Project Scholarship and the whole team from my mentor Chef Anthony. He has always presented me with a lot of opportunities. I have always been big about sharing a lot of the scholarships that I get as well with others. And so when I was signing up, I just felt a very big connection within the questions that they were asking. “How did you get involved in the culinary arts? What makes the culinary field a whole different world?” It was more of writing a whole timeline story of how I started, what inspired the whole process of me getting into the field.

I knew that something good was gonna come out of it. 

And how do you think that us partnering up all together has changed your journey?

It's done a lot. The way that The Trotter Project connects with me and the way that they reach out, especially Derrek Miller, the way that he reaches out and the way that he communicates with me and always congratulates me for all the things that I do and the things that I post on my social media.

Just knowing that what you're doing is showing the people that have chosen you for the scholarship or who have seen the way that you have been growing and how you've been representing who you are, shows how much they care and that they’re really here for you.

And same thing with Chef Walks First, when I was first introduced to her and then her finding out that I was also a Trotter Project recipient right away, her mind was blown. It does feel like such serendipity.

You’ve talked about what you’ve got coming up for your school year. What else do you see for your future? What additional dreams do you want to share with us and what can we see from you over these next few years? 

I'm trying to get more into competitions, to represent different dishes and different ideas that I have in mind. I also do want to get started with creating more private dinner services and creating more menus so that I can represent more of the tastings of what Mexico has to offer and what my culture has to offer, and do them in a way where it's a little bit more elevated.

You're going to see them in a way that you probably heard the name, but probably never have seen it done this way. I have always been interested in elevating the cuisine, doing fusions and stuff like that.

For the far future, I do want to start opening a restaurant, starting up with more of a cafe style and then doing the pastries and stuff like that because that's how I started off, with pastries and cakes. And then I’d transition into opening another restaurant that focuses more on the savory style.

Difficult question: If you could choose one pastry and if you could choose one savory dish, to be your signature at both of these future establishments, what would we know you for? 

I think for the savory dish, it would be the mole because everybody associates me with making mole. A lot of people have been very surprised with the amounts of colored moles that I've done and the amounts of different flavored moles that I've done. Like the pink mole that I did, which was one of the first moles that I did for one of my competitions that I did for Barilla pasta. I combined the pink mole and pasta together. 

For the pastry side, I would do conchas because it's another thing that people have also associated me with. I have always done conchas. I have always sold conchas. It was actually one of the first things that I sold within the start of my business, alongside pan de muerto. 

As we continue to stay in touch, is there anything from our organization that you'd want to see?

I would like to see a lot of the scholarship recipients coming together, connecting together, and chatting with each other and seeing how our paths are a little different from each other, but at the end of the day, we all come back collectively. And more of a networking strategy, perhaps for big events too.

We’ll put this on your calendar for 2025, Josue. Thanks for taking the time to tell us your story! To support our scholarships and other programming, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date and check out our donation page here!